Article excerpt

"The truth of art lies in its power to break the monopoly of
established reality to define what is real."

- Herbert Marcuse

IN THE FIVE years since the death of trumpeter Miles Davis,
jazz aficionados are still discussing and debating his life, his
music and the realities he defined. What is rapidly emerging as the
best forum for such discourse occurred last weekend at Washington
University.

"Miles Davis and American Culture," the second annual
conference, was organized by Gerald Early and Elizabeth Kellerman
of the University's American Culture Studies Institute and the
African and Afro-American Studies Program.

Davis' creativity and innovations cut across the major
development periods of jazz, forever changing its soundscape and
breaking the musical monopolies of each decade.

Davis was part of the bebop revolution, founded the "cool"
school and the nonet band configuration, introduced modal
improvisation, collaborated with Gil Evans on experimental
orchestrations and ushered in the jazz-rock-funk fusion era. His
quintets and sextets set the standard for group interplay that is
still followed today. For this, his impact on American culture
cannot be ignored.

For both the casual listener and the ardent fan, the conference
offered - aside from the legitimate pursuit of academic criticism -
rare glimpses into Davis' life and music from a distinguished cadre
of musicians who played with Davis, national and international
scholars and writers, music critics and record producers.

This year's conference, which was more of a tribute than last
year, when controversy and conflict reigned, focused on Davis'
first electric pha se, from 1969 to 1975.

Those were the years when he plugged in, forged his harmonic
abstractions with rock-funk rhythms and was either revered or
vilified, depending upon your taste.

While some jazz Luddites consider this electric period a
radical ab out-face for Davis, panelists argued that Davis merely
did what he always did: listen and evolve. Davis himself said of
the period: "I had seen the way to the future with my music and I
was going for it like I had always done."

Early's introductory comments conveyed the importance of
another gathering dedicated to Davis' memory and meaning. Early
said that we ignore Davis at our peril: "Civic duty demands that we
treat this brilliant artist and very complex man with the same
respect and caring, detailed study that we would reserve for T.S.
Eliot or Tennessee Williams."

In the larger human context, Early said that "Davis was a black
man - an African-American - meaning that his art is touched with a
political and social importance. He was something of a genius,
which means, as a black man, he was likely to be, even more so than
most geniuses, deeply misunderstood."

Musicians rarely have the opportunity to gauge the significance
of their work at the time of its creation; only through the lens of
time can the product be fully understood. …